Writing Quotes - Page 355

The language fictional characters use is chosen for effect, at least if the author is concentrating.

Observe, don't imitate.

We've learned over the years that if we wanted we could write anything that just felt good or sounded good and it didn't necessarily have to have any particular meaning to us. As odd as it seemed to us, reviewers would take it upon themselves to interject their own meanings on our lyrics. Sometimes we sit and read other people's interpretations of our lyrics and think, 'Hey, that's pretty good.' If we liked it, we would keep our mouths shut and just accept the credit as if it was what we meant all along.

I've never been able to write a book without one very strong character in my rucksack.

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

I myself am pursuing the same instinctive course as the veriest human animal you can think of I am, however young, writing at random straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one opinion. Yet may I not in this be free from sin?

All writing is a form of prayer.

When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things.

And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.

A novel is a piece of architecture. It's not random wallowings or confessional diaries. It's a building-it has to have walls and floors and the bathrooms have to work.

I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.

It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.

It's a whole package, singer/songwriter. I like writing but I like performing just as much.

To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again and once more, and over and over.

I still enjoy the process of writing. If I ever feel like I am going through the motions because I can sell anything at this level, I hope that somebody, somewhere who I trust will tell me to take a break and stop because it's sounding old. But so far, I don't feel like I'm boring anyone.

If my public existence does anything worthwhile, hopefully it at least demystifies the author a bit, because I know when I was younger I felt like authors were like wizards or something. Turns out they're total muggles.

Writing does not resurrect. It buries.

You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.

Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.

Anything that happens to you has some bearing upon what you write.

I do a lot of revising. Certain chapters six or seven times. Occasionally you can hit it right the first time. More often, you don't.

I was never trying to write a hit. I was just trying to write good songs and get a message out, and it was my great good fortune to be popular.

Never submit an idea or chapter to an editor or publisher, no matter how much he would like you to. Writing from the approved idea is (another) gravely serious time-waster. This is your story. Try and find out what your editor wants in advance, but then try and give it to him in one piece.

How many words a day do I write? Between six and seven thousand. And how many hours does that take? Three on a good day, as high as thirteen on a bad one

Naturally, people's image is of a performer, but the reality of it is the writing for me has always been the most important thing and the most rewarding thing.